Ian gritted his teeth as he dodged a dozen different wind barriers that forced him to continuously pivot. If he lingered anywhere for more than a moment, a gout of flame blasted him, seeming to materialize from thin air.

Ian thought back to what he saw in Woeshiv’s soul...back even to what he saw when developing a counter to Remorse attacks: a vast tapestry of arrows with every color imaginable. He thought that there must be some connection, some underlying truth he had yet to grasp.

Ian couldn’t see End arrows, but he wondered if somehow, what he was seeing was connected. Even if there weren’t End practitioners, the arrows would still be present, Ian thought as he twisted his body and flung himself past a maw of wind and a flare of fire. I’m not an End practitioner, so I can’t see arrows in the waking world, nor can I create or break oaths. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I can never see arrows of fate at all.

Two of his Death bats suddenly spotted someone above, tearing him from his thoughts.

Found you.

Something swiped the bat constructs out of the air, tearing their bones apart, but the constructs had fulfilled their purpose. Ian dredged up more bones from his void storage in preparation to engage.

Bone projectiles won’t fare well against this wind elementalist, Ian reasoned, frowning. They’ll just be blown off course. Instead, he used the new bones to create an articulated chain grounded to himself.

“Bluebird, go ahead,” Ian said. “Take down the wind elementalist.”

Ian knew that Zilverna was a wind elementalist in his own right, but he wasn’t nearly on the level of whoever was attacking now. He suspected he was probably dealing with Judith Vern, the Eldemari’s second after Kaiwen Chowicz. That wasn’t good news: Judith was a peak practitioner who could give even Urstes a run for his money.

As Ian ripped through the air, he suddenly felt himself grow lightheaded. Can’t breathe...? Is she changing the composition of the air itself?

Bluebird sent out a blast of twisting blue-black energy, eliciting a shrill snarl from its target. Before Ian could close the distance and get the assailant in his range, the practitioner disappeared, wind propelling her away with a sonic burst.

Damn, she’s fast, Ian thought, just barely catching a glimpse and confirming Judith’s identity. But I can’t let her go. Three bats in Judith’s direction swooped to rend her with energy-serrated claws, forcing the woman to either dodge or retaliate. Bluebird closed in and unleashed another blast of energy, clipping Judith on the arm.

Ian lashed out with his massive bone chain, controlling the links themselves to work with the bats and Bluebird to entrap the elementalist. Judith darted away in a swirl of wind, pushing the bats back and sending Bluebird careening, the bird weathering the brunt of the attack.

They continued their annoying martial dance for another fifteen seconds before Ian finally caught Judith’s foot in his chains. The woman’s eyes became steely the moment she noticed. From the way she fought against his control, Ian realized that Judith would’ve cut her foot off at the ankle if Ian hadn’t immediately frozen her movements, using the chain as a conduit through which to leverage his Death energy.

That’s new, Ian thought. He had never been able to increase his range like that before. He realized with a start that he’d instinctively laced his chains with a thread of his ethereal body, just like he would if he were trying to manipulate a soul.

He didn’t have time to dwell on the insight now.

Should I kill her? Ian wondered, frowning.

In his moment of indecision, a flare of fire erupted around him both within and without his bone shield. Ian grimaced and cried out as the intense heat charred his skin, Bluebird too far away to shield him from the unexpected blast.

Ian clutched his head, Death swirling around him.

Everything within his range dropped dead. Cacti, grasses, insects, animals, Judith...and to Ian’s horror...an intrepid Zilverna, his airborne silhouette falling from the sky before Ian’s eyes like a marionette with its string severed.

Did he come in close to save Judith? Ian wondered, his breath catching in his throat. He was well-hidden; I didn’t expect him to reveal himself, let alone come within my range.

Zilverna...you idiot! Ian seethed. Why would you do that? What is your mother going to do now?

Ian didn’t blame the Eldemari for coming after him; in an odd way, he knew it wasn’t personal, and he did feel guilty for putting her entire nation at risk. But if he killed her son...

It’s one thing to destroy the woman’s country because of something beyond my control. It’s another thing to kill her only child.

Something told him that if he left Zilverna dead, the Eldemari would snap...and who knew what she’d order her people to do to the SPU in retaliation.

Ian’s heart raced as he cradled Zilverna and Judith’s forms and brought them down to the sand, calling all of his constructs and Bluebird to his side. These should be the only two, Ian thought; if there was another assailant, they probably would have made themselves known by now.

Ian cast a thread of ethereal essence over Judith and Zilverna, noting that both of their souls were still inside of their bodies.

I’ll try with Judith first, Ian thought, his brow furrowed in concentration. He had two chances to figure out how to bring someone back to life once they were dead as Judith and Zilverna were, their souls on the brink of separating.

Ian had absolutely no idea how to do so. It wasn’t something Soolemar explicitly ever mentioned, but Ian figured that he needed to try. He placed one hand upon Judith’s sternum and slid another under between her shoulder blades, his finger alighting on her spine. He began to use the soul-controlling exercises he learned with Soolemar and felt the soul begin to swirl in place within Judith’s corpse.

There must be a way to reattach it, so to speak, Ian thought. Like...soul sutures. Ian began to make the kinds of anchors he used on mannequins using Judith’s ribcage, his Death energy carving up her bones without leaving any external mark on her skin.

The soul began to stabilize in place...but something was missing. Ian realized that he’d really only attached the soul to the corpse, not restored Judith to life, even though her body was fresh enough to be resuscitated without lasting damage.

Ian began to feel a sense of panic welling up inside of him, helplessness causing his hands to tremble.

His eyes flared with violet energy as his resolve redoubled. There must be a way.

The soul is a spiral of experience through time, expanding ever inward...It’s like the arrows of fate that Euryphel sees, like Woeshiv’s manifest avatar. It’s the human spark that makes us real...

It’s a seed of chaos.

Something clicked as the words formed in Ian’s head. If the soul is a seed, it needs to be planted. Sure, Ian could try and anchor the soul, but it needed something more.

Ian mentally cursed himself for not visiting a hospital to witness a child birth. What did it look like when an infant gained a soul?

Shaking his head, Ian began to cut into the bones with renewed focus. While before he made anchor nodes, now he left trails of zig-zagging scrapes filled with small threads of his own soul-empowered ethereal body. The seconds dragged on like small eternities as he carved Judith’s bones and flesh, hoping for her soul to take root.

Ian tore himself away, wiping desperate wetness from his eyes. He didn’t think it worked; Judith’s body remained comatose.

One more shot.

Ian knelt over Zilverna’s stabilized corpse, placing his hands upon his back and chest as he’d done with Judith.

Perhaps I doomed Judith from the beginning when I started moving her soul, Ian realized. Zilverna’s soul feels...uprooted, but I think...I can see how it might have been. Where before Ian spun Judith’s soul as he’d learned to do when inserting a soul into a mannequin, he instead enveloped Zilverna’s soul in a small cushion of energy. He began to tug small spindles of Zilverna’s soul into the man’s body, realizing that it wasn’t anchored to his bones, but to his vessels.

Ian felt Zilverna’s soul slipping from his grasp during the inspection. He took a deep breath, his head hovering above Zilverna’s chest, and tried to remember what it had felt like when Soolemar brought him into Woeshiv’s consciousness.

Turning his focus inward, Ian felt something in his ethereal body that he hadn’t noticed before: A small tear where his ethereal essence crossed into Zilverna’s corpse. Once he noticed it, he began to tug, the tear unraveling like a thread.

Ian could feel Zilverna’s soul struggle against his energy.

I don’t have time for this.

Ian yanked the thread apart, the tear popping open. Suddenly, he found himself in a familiar void. Erratic rainbow arrows streaked past, but they were crooked and tangled. He saw a figure laced in crimson and gold ribbons of fate, arrow heads sticking out at right angles like shark teeth. The ribbons twisted and shred themselves to tatters, pieces of ribbon floating into the void.

Beneath the serrated ribbons Ian recognized a dark silhouette whose contours spilled into the darkness. Ian realized that the void itself had taken on the color of rotting blood.

Hello?

…

The figure said nothing. On a whim, Ian reached forward and touched it only to be bombarded by a rush of emotions and images. He saw flashes of the Eldemari and people he didn’t recognize, the mentors, friends, and rivals who spanned Zilverna’s orbit. He experienced the first-hand fear of flames licking across his hand for the first time, the joy of flying over the crimson Vermuthi desert, and finally...

He saw himself: an icon of terror, a void swallowing even the stars, an agent of despair.

Zilverna...?

Ian felt himself enter the whirlpool of himself, a siphon of terror without escape. He tried to recall his own memories, remind himself who he really was, but was overwhelmed by the flood of fear.

Ian stared into the blood-red void of death and suddenly recalled the moment when Coronus Byrrh had pierced his heart. He relived the exhilaration of standing on the precipice, wielding his mastery to triumph over death and save himself by his own hand.

He remembered the cold certainty rising in his blood as he forced his heart to pump, sneering at his opponent’s challenge. I will survive; I will best you.

I will live.

A stilted voice echoed the words back to him. I...will live...

Time stopped. Scraps of ribbons froze in the air and started to move in reverse, piecing together thread by thread. The arrows of fate calmly shifted as their jagged knots loosened.

Away from the golden figure, Ian receded out of the red void, his form moving faster and faster until the world shattered.

Ian’s heart thumped in his chest, audible to his own ears.

Suddenly Zilverna coughed, then sucked in a breath.

Ian swiped a hand, knocking the man unconscious, but definitely leaving him alive. He leaned back and stared up at the stars, his head swimming.

I just...wow.